


What Passes Through

by agent_orange



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, Origin Story, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 14:35:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1748084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_orange/pseuds/agent_orange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I never felt so much life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Passes Through

The hardest thing Inara's ever had to do was leave home.

Kaylee, she knows, was a few weeks past her eighteenth birthday when she signed on as Serenity's mechanic. Inara was seven years old when she left home.

Nobody, especially Mal, would guess she was born poorer than all of them, that she had parents who were too young for a child, parents who could barely feed her and keep her in clothes. Sihnon is a beautiful planet, especially the larger cities, but Inara spent her early years in a town barely kept going by subsistence farming.

They'd passed her over to a woman who'd come to town one day, dressed in fancy clothes, her voice more melodic than anyone Inara had ever heard. The promises she'd made of a better life for their daughter, a chance for her to get and education and travel the 'verse captivated Inara's parents, and by the end of the day, she was packed and ready to go.

Not that she'd wanted to. It sounded wonderful, yes, but Inara didn't want to leave her family. She'd never gone anywhere without her mama and brothers. She'd screamed and cried, and the woman has told her to stop it right away, that her behavior would not, under any circumstances, be tolerated by the Guild.

Adjusting was hard, and Inara always felt inferior to the other girls, but she did like learning about history, about music. Learning how to dance and sign her name with a flourish. Three months in, though, she's sick of tea and cakes, and she's still struggling to retain everything she's learning.

Leaving the safety of the Guild to really see the 'verse, like she'd been promised, is a hard choice, but it's entirely hers. She makes a life for herself, even if it isn't the one she'd expected.


End file.
